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SHINING Frontman Says He Is Bipolar, Schizophrenic With A Split Personality

Pete Woods of Ave Noctum recently conducted an interview with vocalist Niklas Kvarforth of Swedish extreme metallers SHINING. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

On interviews:

Niklas: “I am going to do special interviews in the future maybe for, like, Bizarre and stuff like that but I have decided that in general I want the others in the band to speak, more like a family.”

On recording cover songs:

Niklas: “I have always wanted to cover Michael Jackson, but that would be impossible, I can’t sing those lines. ALIEN ANT FARM did a cover and that came out pretty good, actually. Also maybe PRINCE, MADONNA and I’m a huge fan of RIHANNA now.”

On the forthcoming SHINING album, tentatively titled “VIII”:

Niklas: “This time I just threw away everything that I had and I asked the bassist, who is, like, 19 years old and has come into the band, and said, ‘Hey, let’s rent out an apartment and do a lot of drugs and drink a lot of drinks, fuck a lot of prostitutes and write an album!’ And we did. This guy came up with loads of material. I have never met people who interfere with my music but I was so impressed with this guy. I’m not old, but I’m getting older and I now finally understand what these old rockers are saying about needing some young blood and enthusiasm.”

On guest musicians that appear on “VIII”:

Niklas: “Yes there is Andy [La Rocque] from KING DIAMOND and Hoest from TAAKE and Peter [Bjärgö] from ARCANA. He was actually the vocal coach for the whole recording. You know, I don’t have that much confidence when it comes to clean vocals and he told me how to do things.”

On his mental health:

Niklas: “When I was in the studio, I stopped with my Zyprexa. I have three conditions. I am bipolar, which mean I have to take Venaflaxine, I take 300mg of that every day. Then I am schizophrenic, and for that I take Zyprexa which is one of the most dangerous and extreme medicines there are. I take 20mg, which is the maximum and I just stopped it because I gained so much weight and I didn’t know reality. The thing about it is, although there are 500 types of schizophrenia, it is the hallucinations that are the problem, and now when I have started going to psychotherapy again, they believe I have a split personality. I have two sides, one really, really negative one and one like I am at the moment. The negative one, when it comes up now, I tend to black out and don’t remember what I’ve done and that’s dangerous. And then of course I have sleep deprivations and there are medicines for that and panic attacks and I need things to stabilize them. ”

On religion:

Niklas: “I am religious myself. It’s the second religious lyric I have had with SHINING and it is a praise to the lord, the great Satan, chaos. That is actually the reason that I am single now. I have been single for six months. I had to throw her out and the reason in the end was, well, the chorus was directed at her. You have to understand my devotion to evil, whatever evil is, as it will always come before you. If you got sick and had one day to live, I would do anything for you, but if my lord would command, I would just leave you in the gutter. She couldn’t handle that, which is quite understandable.”